"North Bumfuck fiver-four-one,"Broglie chuckled.Broglie's face held its quizzical smile, but the low sound of his laughter was drowned by incoming shells and the tanks' response to them. This was a sustained pounding from all three Republican gun positions: Hills 504 and 661 to the north, and Hill 541 South, ten kilometers southeast of the Federal base.
The Reps fired thirty or forty shells in less than a minute. Under the tribarrels' lash, the explosions merged into a drumming roar—punctuated by the sharp
The bunker rocked. Dust drifted down from the sandbagged roof. Hawes rubbed his hollow eyes and pretended not to have heard the blast.
The sound of the salvoes died away. One of the Federal garrison screamed nearby. Des Grieux wasn't sure whether the man was wounded or simply broken by the constant hammering. The unanswered shelling got to him, too; but it made him want to go out and kill, not hide in a bunker and scream.
"Lieutenant," Des Grieux said in the same measured, deadly voice as before. "We oughta go out and nail the bastards.
"The relieving force—"Lindgren said.
"The relieving force hasn't gotten here in three weeks, so they aren't exactly burning up the road, now, are they?" Des Grieux said. "Look—"
"They'll get here," said Broglie. "They've got Major Howes and three of our companies with 'em, so they'll get here.And we'll wait it out, because that's what Colonel Hammer ordered us to do."
Lindgren opened his mouth to speak, but he closed it again and let the tank commanders argue the question. Des Grieux didn't even pretend to care what a newbie lieutenant thought. As for Broglie—
Sergeant Lucas Broglie was more polite, and Broglie appreciated the value of Lindgren's education from the Military Academy of Nieuw Friesland.But Broglie didn't much care what a newbie lieutenant thought, either.
"I didn't say we ought to bug out," Des Grieux said. His eyes were as open and empty as a cannon's bore. "I said we could
Open and empty and deadly . . . .
"Four tanks can't take on twenty thousand Reps," Broglie said. His smile was an equivalent of Des Grieux's blank stare: the way Broglie's face formed itself when the mind beneath was under stress.
He swept an arc with his thumb.The bunker was too strait to allow him to make a full-arm gesture. "That's what they got out there. Twenty thousand of them."
